Terri Savelle Foy: How to stay disciplined with your habits

TERRI: Self-Discipline is leaning into resistance. You know, it’s taking action in spite of how you feel. Motivation is your overall desire to do something. So here’s how you move from motivation to a lifestyle of self-discipline. TERRI: Hey, I’m Terri Savelle Foy your cheerleader of dreams. Hey, I want to talk to you today about five proven methods to help you stay disciplined. You know, I have posted something on Instagram asking if we could just sit down and talk. What is the one question you would want me to answer? And we received hundreds of questions and I actually wrote down the most common ones. And then I counted how many times the most popular ones were asked. So today I want to address one of the top five questions, which is this… How do you stay disciplined with your habits? Well, it’s not coincidental that the most common trait I’ve seen in the most successful people in the world is self-discipline. Now, let me distinguish between self-discipline and motivation. Self-Discipline is leaning into resistance. You know, it’s taking action in spite of how you feel. Motivation is your overall desire to do something. So here’s how you move from motivation to a lifestyle of self discipline. You Ready? Okay. Number one is decide on your new identity. Now let me explain this. You know, for a moment, forget about the goal you’re trying to achieve. Instead, focus on the identity you want to have. You know, in James Clears book on atomic habits, he explained it like this. He said, imagine two people are resisting a cigarette. One person says, no thank you, I’m trying to quit. Sounds reasonable. But this person still sees them self as a smoker who’s trying something, but their identity is a smoker trying to be something else. They’re hoping that this behavior will change while carrying the same beliefs. Now the second one declines by saying, no thanks, I’m not a smoker. Now, sounds like a minor change, but it’s major. See, they’ve already decided on this new identity, even though they’re still in the process of changing. So saying, I’m not a smoker, is a significant change in your identity. So what they’re declaring is smoking is a part of my former life, not my current identity. So once you’ve established a change in your identity and yes, you get to decide, then you’re going to begin walking in alignment with that new identity. You know, you may have heard me talk about how for 11 years after college graduation, I was pretty much lazy, in a Rut, didn’t work out consistently only for summer or spring. I was terrible with my money, didn’t save any spent, everything we earned. I would wake up at the last minute to go to work. I had no ambition. But in 2002 I decided on a whole new identity. You’ve heard these day. I looked at my life, you know, I was separated from my husband, in debt, unhealthy. My house was a mess, I was a mess. And I had a little five year old girl looking to me for inspiration. And I remember when I started making changes and people started noticing my discipline, my style of working out every day, getting up at five o’clock reading, listening to messages, and they started commenting. Terri is so disciplined and I would hear that and I loved it. And you know what? It made me want to maintain that identity. So start thinking of yourself as who you want to be. An athlete, a writer, a singer, a designer. You know, someone who’s fit and healthy. And remember your behavior will never deviate from your personal identity. So the way you view yourself is how you will act. If you view yourself as a procrastinator, you will procrastinate. If you view yourself as lazy, you will maintain a lazy lifestyle. So ask yourself, you know, what labels have you put on yourself? Like if you had a little post it note, what would you put on yourself? Who Do you need to become to achieve your goals? So start thinking of changing your behavior by changing your identity. Disciplined, athletic, motivated, consistent, organized, proactive, early riser. So think about that. Number two is affirm it every day. This is pretty intense, but you get the picture. How do you change the way you view yourself? It’s with the words of your mouth. You know, God’s Word says, “Thou shall decree a thing and it will be established unto you.” So, no wonder you may have stayed lazy, procrastinating, un-disciplined. Because you’ve been decree in it. So do the opposite. Start declaring, I am disciplined, I am proactive, I am energetic, I am successful. So change your internal and your external dialogue about yourself. You know, I made a list in 2007 and I begin speaking it over myself, which was the exact opposite of who I truly was. But you know what happened my life and my behavior started lining up with my words. So change what you’re saying and you’ll change what you’re seeing. Number three is look at reminders you might say, of what? Of why you’re being disciplined in the first place. You know, I heard a story about a guy who, he went to the doctor for a checkup because so many people, his family had died of a certain heart condition around his age. Well, the doctor said flat out, he said, your wife is pregnant, right? He said, do you want to live to see this child go to school? Do you want some other man walking your daughter down the aisle? Here’s an example. You know on her wedding day, he gave him like this harsh reality. He said, if not, then you better change your eating habits. He said, change your fitness routine. Well, that’s all it took. He said, now you know, he has photos on his phone of his wife, his children, you know, just picturing this is who I’m doing it for. He said, this is why I get up at five o’clock in the morning and go to the gym. This is why I ate a salad over the cheeseburger most meals. So put your goals, put your reasons, your why on your phone. You know, they say, we check our phones at least 80 times a day on average 80 times. So put your motivation on your screensaver. He could be a child going to college. Put your child with a graduation cap on your phone. You know, that can be your reminder to stop eating out and start putting that money in a savings account so you get the picture. Number four is set yourself up to succeed. In other words, planning your habits on your calendar, not just the day, but the time to map out your entire week on your calendar. Now, I always do this on Sunday night. I don’t do say workout Monday through Friday. I say workout five o’clock to six o’clock and get everything ready the night before. If you want to start working out, get your clothes out the night before you want to save money and stop spending everything. Set up automatic withdrawal into your savings account as soon as you get paid, just do it and you will be amazed one year from now when you see how much you’ve saved, you want to stop eating late at night or eating too much junk food empty the pantry of all the junk food. Only have what is healthy and you’ll start to break the habit. If you’re spending too much money each week, eating out at lunches, put a certain amount of cash in an envelope for the week and when the cash is gone, you stay home or you take your lunch. Okay, number five. My last point is track your progress. You know this is a habits calendar that we have here, but use a calendar that you can start tracking because you need to see how this disciplined you become mark through each day that you keep your commitment with yourself and that’s just it. The more you keep your promise to yourself of reading 20 minutes a day, saving $25 a week, working out five days a week, your confidence is going to grow tremendously and your self discipline is going to soar. Theodore Roosevelt said it like this. He said, “With self-discipline most anything is possible.” Let me give you a little side now before we close this out. Learn to love the discomfort. Every time you feel discomfort, celebrate, get excited because it means you’re growing. You have you know groaning in your stomach because you’re hungry and maybe you’ve gone on a fast. That’s a good sign. Things are changing. It means you’re succeeding, you’re getting closer to the goal. Just like go into the gym and working out makes you feel better. Every time you embrace discomfort, you are practicing self discipline and you always feel good when you leave the gym, right? You’ve embraced the discomfort. It makes you better. So just remember the struggle is good for you. And let me just, let me tell you this story because I thought it was pretty interesting. It was the story I heard about a beekeeper who he said that, you know when the little bee is in the first stage, it’s put into this little cell and enough honey is actually stored there for its use until it reaches maturity. Now, I never knew this, but he said the honey is sealed with a capsule of wax and when the tiny bee has fed itself on the honey and it runs out, that means its time has come for the bee to emerge out into the open. But it is quite the struggle straining to get through the wax. Now this is what it said. If the only way for the beat to exit is through this agony of the struggle, the Bee actually rubs off this little membrane that hid its wings. And on the other side it’s able to fly. In fact, the beekeeper said one time a moth got into the hive and it fed on all the wax and the bees just got out without any strain or trouble. But here’s the thing, they couldn’t fly and the other bees stung them to death. And now the words, your struggles are never wasted. The Times you push yourself to do what’s best, what’s you know, do what’s going to help you down the road. It’s always for your benefit. So I want to challenge you, embrace the struggle embrace the self discipline. This the fun. And Hey, I hope you enjoyed this podcast today. If you’d like to dig a little deeper into this topic, you can actually download my podcast notes cause I may have gone a little fast today, but I want you to get my notes so you can really study what I said. Just click the link below, go to terri.com/self-discipline and I want to give you my notes and don’t forget, follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and if this video spoke to you, please share it with someone else. You can get on this growth track together. Thank you for watching and remember, I’m cheering you on to live your dreams.